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Tuesday, March 9, 2010

When we were in Amish country last Saturday, everywhere we looked we saw laundry hanging. The warmth of the sun coupled with the fresh breezes made it a great day to get the laundry out.

At the place above, clothes hang from the porch rafters as well as on a pulley system that stretches the length of the yard.

Who needs fabric softener when you have the wind slapping your clothes? Not me, baybee.

We’re headed home at this point, when we saw all the laundry and these are only a few photos I managed to glean. But it seemed that every place we passed had full lines out.

And then we came home ourselves and took advantage of the sun.

Some of you commented recently about the hanging out of laundry in the wintertime. We’ve hung ours out all through the winter. The trick is to do it on a sunny day. It will dry if the sun is shining. It may freeze a little bit (or a lot) but it will eventually dry. We have a little protected area by the mudroom door that is perfect for a laundry line.

And we can always pop it into the dryer to fluff it up, if we like. But we rarely do.

My husband even hung out the clothes during the deep snows last month. He couldn’t really get much on the line with the snow that high, though.

This last photo was taken around the holidays. And no, that’s not George’s own little towel. It’s a hand towel we use in the powder room.

I love hanging things on the line. It gives me a nice sense of order, helps to save money, keeps my husband busy, and I like the idea of using nature to dry my clothes.

To those who asked, we live in Maryland but every now and then we do a grocery run to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. It’s just over an hour from our home.

33 comments:

On our drive home from the lake this weekend we passed a house with such colorful clothes hanging outside, I really wanted to tell hubby to turn around so I could take a shot, but I knew better! ;-)

When we go to England, we stay at one of hubby's sisters and she dries her wash outside, but the bath towels are so stiff when using after a shower! I do like the thought of fresh line dried clothes, though.

I miss hanging out clothes. I had to give it up because of allergy sufferers in our house (mostly the dog). But there's nothing like climbing into a bed that's been made with sheets fresh from the line.

I love line dried clothes and especially sheets and towels! We need to put a retractable line up here! Growing up it was my job to hang the clothes or bring them in, I wonder what happened to my mom's old clothespin pouch?!

Kate:Love the photos. The thought of hanging laundry on the line brings back thoughts of my childhood. Florida is usually too humid to hang things out to dry, but perhaps I'll give it a try next laundry day.I love George's towel, too! So sweet.Kes has her own apre-swim towels, but none with her own monogram. I just added it to my "To Do" list! Thanks for the idea.xoxoDonna

My parents are the same way, year-round they're hangin' out the clothes. I love line-drying in warmer months but can't quite muster up the energy to drag wet clothes out to the line in freezing weather. Maybe if I didn't wait and do fourteen loads at once, it wouldn't be so cumbersome.

Very cute hand towel, but I'm not convinced it isn't George's. He probably has his own line of napkins and bed linens too.

I love the smell of laundry that has dried outside. I live in a small country town in Australia & we have the opposite problem, towels don't go stiff from the cold, they go stiff(or crunchey as my 9 yr old says!)from the heat!

Today however I have washing hanging over racks inside,we have had rain, lots & lots of rain. Enough to fill our almost empty tanks! In fact more rain in 3 days than we have had in 2 years! Outside is smelling lovely & fresh! You can't beat that rain "smell"!!

Perspective. I've always line dried. Tho my dryer does get used when it's rainy. When my son was young, he thought his clean clothes that had come out of the dryer were dirty..lol..he was used to the starchy/snappy line dried ones. Yup, those line dried towels get the job done! Nice blog Kate, I miss our trips to the Mid-West and the Amish buggies.

Somewhere I have a photograph (taken by a professional) of an Amish woman hanging clothes on a line on a bit of a windy day. Just can't figure out where to hang it.

When I was in seminary my apartment had a washer but not a working dryer. Clothes went out on a pulley line from my second floor balcony. I prefer soft and supple to the stiffness of air-dried, but I got used to it, and occasionally miss that experience. What I don't miss is when the wind whipped the clothes around the two lines and you had to "unwhip" them back before you could pull them in!

Mornin Kate, My Granny taught me how to hang a proper line. We sorted everything. Sheets in the basket first, then towels and so on down the line, all getting smaller til the line was full. She had 3 lines, and she always hung the "undies" on the middle line. How cute was that. I too can remember how the sheets felt and smelled. Yummmm. Thank you for another great, "start to the day" post. T

I love your photos, esp the beautiful birds, I live in WA and the south east corner is desert like, so we don't get the beautiful birds you all have. I also adored your pic's of amish country. I've been there a few times, and it always amazes me their way of life, their homes, barns, etc. Thanks for always sharing such awesoem pictures!!

Growing up in the Bronx many apartments had cothes lines out the bathroom window (I am assuming now looking back it was because you did small handwashes of lingerie or other undies in the bathroom basin) and most of those lines had pulleys ... ToonMan does our laundry but I do the folding, his idea of folding is not mine .. or probably anyone else's.

My name is Kate. I live in Maryland with a border collie named George in an old manor house that predates the Revolutionary War. I began this blog in 2007 to share my photography with my family and friends. Welcome.

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